The Caxley Chronicles by Miss Read Read Free Book Online

whiskers on the upper part of the muzzle, and the bars which ran, echelon fashion, along each jaw.
    He began to feel excitement rising. The sketch was good. He selected a firmer piece of charcoal and began the difficult job of emphasising the streak of each closed eye and the puckering of the mouth.
    Suddenly, the cat woke, yawned, leapt down and vanished. Furious, Dan swore, flung away the charcoal and burst from the studio into the garden. He found that he was shaking with fury. He would take a brief walk to calm himself. He picked up the empty turpentine bottle, resolved to get it filled at North's, have a quick drink and return to work.
    Swinging the bottle, his great hat crammed on the back of his red head, he strode through the market place. There were several people outside the baker's shop and he was forced to step close to the window in order to pass them. A wave of spicy fragrance floated from the open. Sep was putting a trayful of sticky brown lardy cakes in the window, and Dan realised that he was desperately hungry. He stepped down into the shop, and saw, for the first time, Edna Howard.
    It was a shock as sudden and delightful as a plunge into the Cax on a hot afternoon. Dan knew beauty, when he saw it, by instinct and by training. This was the real thing, warm, gracious, dynamic. In one intent glance he noted the dark soft wings of hair, the upward sweep of the cheekbones, the angle of the small pink ears, and the most beautiful liquid brown eyes he had ever seen. Dan gazed in amazement. To think that this beauty had remained hidden from him so long!
    'Sir?' asked Sep deferentially.
    Dan wrenched his eyes away.
    'Oh, ah!' he faltered. He fumbled in his pocket for a sixpence. 'One of your lardy cakes, if you please.'
    While Sep busied himself in wrapping up his purchase in fine white paper, Dan looked again. Edna had walked across the shop to a shelf where she was stacking loaves. Her figure was as exquisite as her face, her movements supple. There
was something oddly foreign about her which excited Dan.
    He found Sep holding out the bag. He was looking at him curiously.
    'Thanks. Good day to you,' said Dan briskly, and departed towards the river bank.
    There, sitting on the grassy bank beneath a may tree, he devoured his fresh, warm lardy cake and made plans.
    She must sit for him. He must go back again and ask her. She was the perfect subject for his type of portrait—full of colour, warmth and movement. She must be Sep Howard's wife. He groped in his memory.
    Of course! What had the old wives said? 'He married beneath him—a
Bryant,
you know!'
    Dan leapt to his feet, and banged the crumbs from his clothes.
    '"The gipsy",' he cried. 'That's what we'll call it: "The Gipsy Girl"!'

5. Domestic Rebellion
    D AN FOUGHT down the impulse to return at once to Sep's shop and hurried home instead. By judicious questioning of his mother, he confirmed that the beautiful girl was indeed Sep Howard's wife.
    In his studio, he wrote a brief note to say that he would give himself the pleasure of calling upon Mr and Mrs Howard that evening at eight o'clock, on a matter of business, and dispatched it by the little maid-of-all-work. The hours until that time seemed excessively tedious to the impatient artist.
    "I can't think why he didn't say anything in the shop this morning,' said Sep, much puzzled, as he read the note.
    'Maybe it's only just come to his mind,' suggested Edna, busy mending baby clothes and not much interested in the letter.
    'Seems funny to address it to
both
of us,' went on Sep. Dan Crockford's open admiration of his wife had not escaped Sep's sensitive eye.
    'He probably only wants you to do a bit of catering for a party or something,' said Edna off-handedly. She snapped the cotton with her white teeth, and folded up the baby's gown.
    Prompt at eight, Dan arrived. Edna and Sep received him in the first floor parlour which was at the back of the house overlooking the yard and the distant Cax. The